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knives wrote: Thu Jul 31, 2025 3:51 am

Speaking of systems, something that helped me appreciate just what is happening here is realizing the obsessive degree by which Anderson is creating systems and cataloging. So much of the film is made of people reciting and presenting lists. It eventually becomes its own narrative shorthand by which the story moves. For example, these a short single shot of one of these catalogs which functions as exposition for a rather major plot point. The shot could only really work with an audience inoculated to Anderson’s strange language. In that way I suppose this is also the first American Hou Hsiao Hsien film though it’s actually the more fantastically minded Hong Sang Soo that this film reminds me of.

I could t help but think of Peter Greenaway, particularly Prospero’s Books and The Falls

Yes, that seems a good comparison.

Complicating your religious reading is that the film is one long retelling of Cain and Abel, with the explanation for the strife, 'who could lick who', meaning essentially that it's inborn and inextricable.

I didn’t even notice that. Thanks for more to chew on.

Okay, well, everyone is wrong. Previously I assumed that the problem with Anderson's recent films was his over-reliance on the aesthetic accoutrements of cinema over the basic narrative and character pleasures of a fictive art form. But this film does none of the things which would steer it away from that and I spent a good deal of watching this movie trying to figure out why I nevertheless found it so much better than anything Anderson has done in years. I think the satisfying emotional appeals and insights of his early work peaked with the Royal Tenenbaums and Moonrise Kingdom and everything after that (with the exception of Isle of Dogs which does not rely on these appeals) has faltered to some degree to integrate a convincing emotionality/humanity within the schematics of the ostentatious craftsmanship on-screen. This reached its nadir in Asteroid City, a movie which an alarmingly large number of viewers not only enjoyed (?!) but, worse, singled out the absolutely phony and empty Robie scene as some kind of holy echelon of emotional insight and human understanding. Vom X 100. Perhaps it should not be a surprise that many of those viewers turned on this, because here Anderson shows us why we're not the filmmaker: he does the opposite of what I thought he needed to do and succeeds wildly.

To wit, this film does not go small but it does utterly eschew any conventional emotional appeals whatsoever. And, crucially, in the process it nevertheless contains more direct impact than anything he's done in over a decade. The film is a delightful lark on a 30s travelogue studio pic (it being set in the 50s is no matter, it exists on a plane of time of its own anyways) with additional shades of adventure-tinged board games (the running tallies, the notations and reassessments of strategy, the far off destinations and trials to earn points towards a goal that only exists to be reached) and the schematic roles and details both fit naturally within such established structures and yet still surprise and delight. I was shocked, for instance, that I'm pretty sure this is the first Anderson film to actually make me laugh in over a decade. And if Del Toro's character is sketched a little too closely to Hackman's in Tenenbaums, I don't know that it matters as much as I'd have expected it to. Character here is representational of function and the function only exists to further the plot and the plot only exists to justify the visuals and the visuals only exist to differentiate one spot on the board from the other.

I hope this film gets a reassessment. It feels like I may truly be alone on this one. It's not a surprise that Brody has long been a torch-bearer for Anderson since he also flies the flag for a similarly emotionally disinterested director like Godard, but he's never been fair-weathered when it comes to Anderson so his iconoclastic praise of this film lacks much value. But I worry that Anderson will take all the wrong lessons from the subdued at best response to this experiment in total arms-length distancing when I now believe it's the only thing that can save him if he insists on being so, well, Wes Anderson-y. But then again, I was already wrong once on what can course correct him, so let's be glad he's fiddling with it and hope he keeps doing so...

As one of the infernal masses who loved and was moved by Asteroid City (no movie’s discussion here makes me so jonesing for an argument as this one, god help me when Criterion announces it), I thought it was pretty great and its adherence to basically a farce combined with a math problem was definitely a plus even if the occasional stabs at heavier matters went above me on first viewing. What a great year Benicio is having. And surely this last decade of Wes makes it clear he cares not one wit about the responses to what’s in his head and will just keep doing whatever the fuck calls to him, probably annoying the shit out of you until he hits on another inexplicably winning formula.

The discussion in this thread may be largely negative, but I believe only One Battle After Another is more popular in our dynamic top 10 thread for 2025 at the moment. What a year Benicio is having indeed

I liked this one a lot, too (after also being disappointed by Asteroid City, though I did not hate it), as did my son and daughter to my shock. I agree with domino on a lot but I honestly just liked it on a purely superficial level; I found it to be quite a bit of fun and it held up on a rewatch. Del Toro is great, as is everyone in their walk-ons. I even liked Cumberbatch and his wild make-up (my daughter is a fan and just adored him in this).

I do need to give Asteroid City another go, though. I did not care for The French Dispatch when I saw it in theaters and watched it again on Blu-ray, couldn't connect to it in any way, but I completely turned around on it when I revisited it with the Criterion 4K and I found myself rewatching it a couple of times.

I'll have to give this one another shot. [EDIT: I did, and I ended up disliking it more.] FWIW, all of Anderson's films, especially the later ones, really benefit from seeing them in a theater just so you can take in every detail of his dense and meticulous production design and above all the complex, Rube Goldberg-like set pieces. They're really built for the big screen and your undivided attention. I don't think The French Dispatch was a great film, but those characteristics alone made it worth seeing (if not revisiting), and I was glad to catch a later one-off screening as part of an end-of-year-recap program - few if any directors are consistently creating setpieces on this level.

I didn’t catch his last two, but I thought this was a lot of fun. My wife, who’s not a film lover and has only seen one other Anderson, loved it as well. Neither of us could pinpoint why we liked it either, just that it carries you along from one amusing incident and character to another without becoming tedious or mechanical.

I appreciated your insight, domino, about the board games. Really opened up how its structure’s working.

domino harvey wrote: Wed Oct 22, 2025 3:32 pmTo wit, this film does not go small but it does utterly eschew any conventional emotional appeals whatsoever. And, crucially, in the process it nevertheless contains more direct impact than anything he's done in over a decade. The film is a delightful lark on a 30s travelogue studio pic (it being set in the 50s is no matter, it exists on a plane of time of its own anyways) with additional shades of adventure-tinged board games (the running tallies, the notations and reassessments of strategy, the far off destinations and trials to earn points towards a goal that only exists to be reached) and the schematic roles and details both fit naturally within such established structures and yet still surprise and delight. I was shocked, for instance, that I'm pretty sure this is the first Anderson film to actually make me laugh in over a decade.

Well, now I feel curious: what specifically in the movie hit you so profoundly? Doubtlessly this is on me, as I'm in the middle of multiple academic books and a conference and you are a better writer on film than I, but I found your reasoning a little difficult to parse - unless the overall effect was intended to be "I don't know why this worked so well myself as I would not have expected a film that sounded like this to work." When I think back on what I liked about the film (with the caveat that you can see my ultimately negative assessment upthread), my thoughts generally run towards Mia Threapleton, Mathieu Amalric as probably the most entertaining supporting player, and the ridiculous Del Toro/Cumberbatch fight. Is that what it was for you? What made you laugh? I actually thought we held reasonably similar opinions on this director's filmography in the sense that we had both experienced irritation in the past (Life Aquatic, Asteroid City) when it became evident to us that the craft and production design of the movie was only so much noise and had no meaning.

Agreed with the above users that the board game/general games-playing motif is a useful insight that I assume literally no one before you had ever articulated. The film even ends with it.

I didn’t find anything profound, I just found it immensely entertaining and fun and it reminded me of the things I used to find quite charming about Anderson but had grown tired of lately. That he really didn’t change his recipe much except to forgo any attempts at emotional sincerity are what confounded my expectations and ultimately what delighted me as well. I truly went into this thinking it was going to be awful, so it’s also the recipient of exceeding unfair expectations. As far as laffs go

Spoiler

Amalric’s pleas to stop shooting the ceiling in a lampshading of this common action movie baddie move, Ayoade and his communist crew, the deflated and silly showdown with Cumberbatch, and of course Anderson’s current best utility player Wright (who made me laugh by virtue of his ridiculously broad gladhanding) come to mind— obviously I loved Del Toro in this but I can’t wait til the day Anderson hopefully designs a film around Wright

You've certainly convinced me to revisit this sooner than I otherwise would have (kind of hated it unfortunately). "the things I used to find quite charming about Anderson but had grown tired of lately" seems to be a disease that hits everybody at some point, though at wildly different points in his filmography depending on who you talk to. It's fascinating, can't think of another filmmaker with that unpredictable a hot/cold effect on people without any real consensus on which the good ones are and which the bad ones are.

I revisited this a few times since my first watch/posted thoughts, and have really come to appreciate its cold but silly uniqueness in his canon. I'm also prompted to revisit it again now, so we'll see if any further thoughts appear, but the "30s travelogue studio pic" is spot-on. As I've been watching more films from that period this year, I've come to like this one more - now I know why!

I agree with domino’s sentiment, but the late period Anderson film that actually goes all the way with distance from its characters and exhilarating, self-sufficient style is The French Dispatch! I enjoyed this one, but the father-daughter relationship and judgement day scenes, for example, felt like half-hearted throwbacks to the earlier era. Asteroid City is still the only one I don’t really like, but for the next movie, I’ll be hoping for more abstraction and alienation à la French Dispatch and Henry Sugar and less adventure trappings (Grand Budapest, this). I do think this is the first time in a while he’s really tried to be funny haha instead of simply witty or goofy, and that is indeed one of its strengths. The board game / running tally aesthetic also plays into the Monopoly side of the project; the fact that this is his capitalist magnate movie like the French Dispatch was his artist in the marketplace movie. In typical Hollywood fashion, small business saves del Toro here, whereas Henry Sugar’s sudden wealth dilemma, for example, was a more existential problem.

I forgot about Henry Sugar despite posting about it - just too focused on his features rather than his shorts, but I have no problem placing Henry Sugar among his very best work. It's a fantasy, but there's raw emotion underneath and a sense of moral righteousness that feels like a direct response to today's socioeconomic climate.

Henry Sugar and Three More is an anthology feature just like French Dispatch--Netflix just broke it up for awards consideration

swo17 wrote: Thu Oct 23, 2025 9:50 pm Henry Sugar and Three More is an anthology feature just like French Dispatch--Netflix just broke it up for awards consideration

Oh yeah, I know, but Henry Sugar (the first one) is the standout. Not to put down the others, I've seen the whole 4-part anthology and overall it is superb.

The Swan might be the most emotionally direct and plangent thing he's done, IMO.

Well I've completely changed my tune on this film's flaws, and I think domino's reading helps to reframe a perceived lacking into the simple joys overlooked by alternate expectations. There are also just so many clever gags practically buried in the deadpan quick-paced dialogue that I didn't catch the first few times. Stuff like the pilot drinking beer in the cockpit or the resignation of a "double" agent had me in stitches. I do think the film succeeds partially as a dramatic story of growth towards faith, too. The obscure black-and-white sequences had a more profound cumulative effect this time around - in particular, their Bunuelian qualities were so stunted and underdeveloped that there was a consequence of inscrutability mirroring the theme of one's struggle with faith amongst a lack of concrete fullness. The final b&w sequence eliminates the other heavenly characters and allows a leap of faith to occur outside of peculiar iconography, instead with a strong bond of love between its principals guiding its birth. The trajectory works as a whole, and I was softly moved by Anderson's gradual build of this symbiotic character development. The subdued approach at earning small doses of tenderness works a lot better in this period of Anderson's career than the more forceful tone he'd been shooting for lately, even if I still like those films

This is my favorite full-length Wes since Rushmore. So entertaining but also so interesting in its play on the camel through the eye of the needle themes. I found myself greatly moved by it.

I also adored the Dahl shorts but basically put this on par with those.